Kings County Biographies
This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm
BENJAMIN V. SHARP
This prominent citizen of Kings county, Cal., whose office is in the court house
at Hanford, is the present efficient horticultural commissioner of that division
of the state. Benjamin V. Sharp, a native of Schenectady county, N. Y., was born
April 29, 1839. There he grew to maturity and gained his primary education. In
1858, when he was nineteen years old, he went to McLean county, Ill., and
located not far from Bloomington. He began his higher education in the Illinois
Wesleyan University. It was interrupted, however, in 1861 by President Lincoln's
call to arms. Young Sharp enlisted in Company K, Second Illinois Cavalry, but
was discharged on account of ill health after a year's strenuous service.
Returning to his home in Illinois he resumed his college course and was duly
graduated.
After leaving college he was for two years superintendent of a soldiers orphans'
home at Bloomington. Then he was for some time in the hotel business in that
city. Later he farmed until 1900, when he settled in Kings county, Cal. He
bought one hundred and twenty acres of land a mile and a half south of Hanford.
It was mostly in fruit, but some of the trees have since been removed. He made
his home on the property until 1905, when he rented it; in 1906 he sold it, and
since that time he has lived in Hanford. In 1896 he was appointed by the Board
of Supervisors horticultural commissioner for Kings county, an office which he
filled with great ability and wholly to the satisfaction of the public until in
1904, when he resigned it. He was reappointed in 1906 and has served
continuously ever since. As a citizen he is public-spirited and helpful to a
remarkable degree, and so great is his faith in Hanford that he has invested
heavily in its real estate. Fraternally he affiliates with the Masonic order.
In September, 1864, Mr. Sharp married Elizabeth A. Hazel, a native of Ohio, but
then a resident of Illinois. They have two sons, James A. Sharp of Chicago and
Burns B. Sharp, a contractor well known in Hanford, which is the center of his
business operations.
History of Tulare and Kings Counties, California with Biographical Sketches -
Los Angeles, Calif., Historic Record Company, 1913
pp. 543-544
Transcribed by Kathy Sedler